What a shock! ~ think the future holds ... more? ~  ~ Sooz

HOUSE REPUBLICANS TO BREAK KEY PROMISE ON DAY 1.... When House Republican leaders unveiled their Pledge to America in September, it included a pretty striking promise to voters -- if elected, the GOP majority would "roll back government spending" by "at least $100 billion in the first year alone."

By all accounts, the figure was entirely arbitrary. It's not as if Republicans identified $100 billion in unnecessary spending and vowed to eliminate it, or identified some specific policy benefit associated with these cuts. The capricious goal was chosen because it was a round number. They thought it sounded nice, and voters would be impressed.

Regardless, GOP leaders touted the figure incessantly throughout the campaign season, and kept pushing it in the lead up to the new Congress. Indeed, as recently as last week, party leaders were not only sticking to the $100 billion figure, they insisted that they would make the cuts without touching defense, Social Security, or Medicare.

Even after confronted with evidence that such a goal would necessitate devastating cuts to education, health care, law enforcement, and transportation, House Republicans said they didn't care. After all, a promise is a promise, and this is a priority the GOP is willing to fight for.

Or rather, it was.

Monday, Republicans started slowly backing away from their $100 billion commitment. Yesterday, the pledge was effectively thrown out the window.

Oh, I see. Republican pledges are "hypothetical" promises. The Pledge to America must have included asterisks and disclaimers in font so small, the country missed the caveats.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the ranking member on the House Budget Committee, said, "I think they woke up to the reality that this will have a direct negative impact on people's lives.... You know, it's easy to talk about these things in the abstract. It's another thing when you start taking away people's college loans and Pell Grants or cutting early education programs."

To be sure, I'm delighted Republicans aren't actually going to pursue this indefensible goal. When political leaders start breaking high-profile promises right out of the gate, it's generally not a positive development, but in this case, we're all better off with GOP leaders having changed their minds.

Of course, this doesn't change the fact that Republicans never should have made this promise to begin with, and shouldn't have put themselves in a position in which they're breaking their own pledge immediately after taking office.

QUITE A START.... The new House Republican majority isn't quite one-day old, but commitments they made before the midterm elections are already falling by the wayside.

Perhaps the "Pledge to America" included fine-print disclaimers?

Some of these broken promises are bigger than others. I suspect, for example, that the party's Tea Party base will be none too pleased that Republicans' vow to cut "at least $100 billion in the first year alone" was scrapped before the Speaker's gavel even reached John Boehner's hands. Similarly, the GOP insisted for two years that the minority had to be able to offer amendments to legislation, a vow Boehner repeated during his speech yesterday. A couple of hours later, though, that promise was broken, too.

The decision to scrap attendance records for committee hearings is obviously less significant, but when added to the list, helps paint a picture of broken promises that couldn't even survive the first week of the congressional session.

Indeed, CNN pointed to these three departures from Republicans' stated principles, but there are other examples. The GOP's own rules call for all legislation to go through the regular committee process, as part of a commitment to transparency and due diligence, but when it comes to repealing health care -- the first major task of the new majority -- this rule is being broken, too.

For that matter, Republicans promised constitutional citations for every bill, but their initial legislative efforts have no such language.

Indeed, though it wasn't put in writing, the GOP also vowed to reject legislation that increases the deficit -- and their very first initiative would add over $100 billion to the deficit over the next decade.

At a certain level, it's easy to sympathize with politicians who made pre-election promises they didn't think through at the time. For example, if he had it to do over again, I suspect President Obama wouldn't have vowed to hold health care policy negotiations on C-SPAN, a promise that never really made sense, and caused a fair amount of heartburn a year ago.

But given the number of broken GOP promises, and the speed with which Republicans have ignored elements of their own "Pledge," the new House majority should be aware of a few realities: (1) making promises without forethought is never wise; (2) governing is a whole lot more difficult than taking cheap shots from the minority bleachers.